Innovation Sprints

The Reverte program provides an integrated solution to recover degraded pastureland areas that involve regenerative agricultural practices, financial solutions, and input-use protocols that make available fertilizers, seeds, machinery, and pesticides for growing soy and other intercropped harvests in Cerrado, Brazil. The goal of restoring 1 million hectares of degraded pastureland by 2030 is a win-win for productivity, avoided emissions, conservation, and farmers income. The second phase (2023-2025) aims to leverage $460 million to restore 255,000 hectares.

TechnoServe delivers inclusive, regenerative business solutions that create living incomes, cut emissions, and protect, manage, and restore ecosystems. Through the Farmers Regenerate initiative, TechnoServe enables smallholder farmers in emerging economies to transition to regenerative production, it nworks with food processors and agribusinesses to build climate and nature-positive food systems and utilizes geospatial technology for landscape-level planning, monitoring and verification. In addition, TechnoServe will leverage $300 million in public and private-sector investment to scale transformative projects around the globe.

Pivot Bio is committed to eliminating the need for synthetic nitrogen and replacing it with biological nitrogen, reducing GHG emissions worldwide. To calculate these benefits we will track, quantify, and verify the reduced emissions from the avoidance of synthetic nitrogen. We are committing to $291 million over 4 years in both R&D and product development to rapidly scale new adoption across the globe by improving the nitrogen replacement capacity of our microbes.

Biomass fermentation is a resource-efficient protein production method with up to 97% lower feed and water input requirements. This climate-smart, low-cost technology can be used to feed a growing population while reducing the emissions associated with protein production by up to 95%. Through a $228 million global investment by 2025, this Innovation Sprint will develop fermented protein functionality and scale up these technologies to reach a broader market and bolster global food security.

Using emerging technologies and extensive distribution networks, CF Industries and CHS are partnering to produce lower GHG nitrogen fertilizer to distribute to American farmers. This partnership will enable farmers and their agricultural and food company customers to reduce their upstream emissions in a certain and quantifiable way, while continuing to ensure strong crop yields. We estimate the investment in this partnership to support sustainable, climate-smart agriculture and food systems is approximately $200 million.

To scale the deployment of climate-smart agriculture, Boomitra will deliver $200 million in carbon finance to farmers and ranchers in the developing world by 2025. The initiative will leverage Boomitra's proprietary AI and remote sensing technology, as well as the support of global partners, to implement projects that increase soil carbon, thereby unlocking gigaton-scale carbon removal. The $200 million pledged represents an increased investment and is expected to remove 13M tons of carbon across 5 million acres.

Inari has secured $124 million for an Innovation Sprint to concentrate on developing high-yield, low-input crops, focusing on wheat, soybeans, and corn. The funding will allow Inari to efficiently evaluate multiple gene edits and introduce high-performance edits into locally adapted elite germplasm. Inari's Sprint will progress toward the objective of wheat that is 10% more productive; soybeans that are 20% more productive; and corn that is 10% more productive and requires 40% less water and nitrogen.

Addressing both climate challenges and the current fertilizer supply crisis, this sprint will enable and empower small-scale producers in target regions of Africa, Asia, and Latin America to achieve effective and efficient nitrogen fertilizer management over the next four years (2022-2025). By tailoring validated fertility management practices to their specific conditions, smallholders will optimize productivity, enhance climate resilience, and mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. With a planned budget of approximately $89 million until the end of 2025.

TomorrowNow.org, Tomorrow.io and partners are pioneering an Africa-first innovation spirit to empower 20 million smallholder farmers over five years with next-gen location-based timely agri-weather services. Together, we build on established activities in East Africa, including efforts funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, to leverage $80 million in private sector investment and $20 million in transformative philanthropy to connect governments and local agricultural value chain partners with next-gen weather intelligence and lay the foundations for rapid scale and sustainability.

This Sprint has mobilized $70 million and aims to mobilize at least $200 million total from philanthropy, public and private sector in a global, coordinated research and development initiative to accelerate progress in development and implementation of methane mitigating technologies. The Sprint will address: long-term trials of feed additives; development of new additives; genetic tools and protocols to select for low-emitting livestock; microbiome research to underpin the above research areas; and information necessary to facilitate regulatory approval of mitigation technologies.

The private sector, US, Ireland, and research partners will support transforming the Malawian food system to be climate resilient, provide nutritious food, and support inclusive, sustainable growth. Deployment of $60+ million in investments and innovations will support rural development with firms like Malawi Mangos and Pxyus, surrounding communities, smallholder organizations, and MSMEs through a growth pole approach and youth and gender transformative lens. Over $200 million in additional private investments will be mobilized in five years.

Bayer is pleased to pledge $60 million over four years towards Precision Breeding initiatives which aim to create a design-driven methodology for crop improvement, developing more resilient crops, and sustainable product concepts. Precision Breeding combines Bayer’s industry-leading germplasm, deep genomic insights with globally connected field and environmental insights to develop better solutions faster. The Sprint aims to empower farmers to adjust to changing climatic conditions while decreasing environmental impact in both the breeding R&D process and on the farm. 

Agtech Accelerator is a venture capital-backed program established by Cultivator powered by Conexus, Economic Development Regina, and Emmertech to increase the investment, innovation, and adoption of climate-smart agriculture technology. Bolstered by the $60 million Emmertech fund, this three-year innovation sprint provides agtech startups across Canada and the UK with access to the capital, programming, and connections needed to address issues in food security and the climate crisis.

Mana Impact Agri-Food Tech $50 million Fund's investment thesis is to prepare and co-invest with US and international investors annually in 24 Impact Agri-food Latin American Series-A stage start-ups that are solving climate-challenging problems. US and international investors are expected to co-invest an average of nine for every dollar invested. As a result, the Mana Impact Agri-Food $50 million Fund should generate about $500 million in investments in Latin American climate-smart agriculture tech companies in the coming years.

On-farm agroforestry has proven benefits for income, agricultural productivity, adaptation, and mitigation on smallholder farms in low and middle income countries. This partnership leverages over $50 million in committed funding to plant 250M trees by 2025. In doing this, it will compare the cost-efficiency and effectiveness of four innovative scaling models, to pioneer the mass deployment of tree-planting for climate-vulnerable farmers in 9 African countries, with the goal of planting 1 billion trees in the next decade.

The Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research (FFAR) and the World Farmers Organisation established AgMission™. At the core of climate change is greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Agriculture contributes roughly 13 percent of global GHG emissions, yet the sector has the potential to also mitigate climate change. While advances to activate agriculture’s mitigation potential are happening in fields and labs around the world, there is no unifying force connecting this work or fostering inclusivity and collaboration among scientists, farmers and ranchers.

AgMission is filling this void by establishing a global collective of farmers, ranchers and scientists co-creating and rapidly expanding innovation, adaptation and the adoption of climate-smart technologies. By driving collaboration across agricultural and scientific communities, AgMission is accelerating effective, economically viable and locally customized climate-smart solutions.

AgMission has raised $45 million, including FFAR's matching funds, and continues to fundraise for this unprecedented initiative.

To put global agriculture on a path to mitigate 10 Gt CO2eq per year from protein production by 2050, the Good Food Institute and EIT Food, with support from Climate and Land Use Alliance, and Good Energies Foundation, Climate Advisers, are investing $41 million in open-access research globally to accelerate the development of sustainable plant-based and cultivated meats that are comparable in taste and price to conventional meat, and can generate new economic opportunities. Widespread adoption of sustainable proteins will mitigate direct methane emissions from agriculture, reduce deforestation, and free up millions of hectares for conservation and climate-focused land management.

A new $40M initiative led by the CGIAR, in partnership with the Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, will unlock key climate-resilient traits from CGIAR’s vast global genebank collections. This Innovation Sprint will expand the utilization of high-value genetic diversity to address current and emerging climate challenges faced by millions of smallholder farmers worldwide. The initiative welcomes additional partners from all sectors to scale this critical work.

Cellular agriculture includes techniques for making animal products with significantly reduced environmental impact. Cultivated meat is a prime example: it can slash greenhouse gas emissions, land use and water use considerably. Through a $40 million investment in R&D over five years, this multi-stakeholder Innovation Sprint, carried out by Aleph Farms, enables a just transition to resilient production systems that enhance food security, spur economic growth, empower local communities and foster regional cooperation. 

Crop One Holdings and Emirates Flight Catering entered a $40 million joint venture to open ECO 1 in Dubai, UAE. The 330,000 sqft facility will provide food security for the Middle East by producing over three tons of high-quality leafy greens daily, using 95% less water than conventionally grown produce. ECO 1 is designed for continuous output of clean leafy greens grown without pesticides or chemicals. Crop One is helping grow a more sustainable global food system through its industry-leading vertical farming technology.

BetterFedFoods LLC is an innovative leader in providing Climate-Smart Premiums to beef producers practicing regenerative farming through microalgae to improve soil organic matter, plant health, and animal performance. Extensive university research and commercial trials have validated the practices, as well as improving traceability and engaging consumers through product-specific QR codes driven by blockchain. In addition, BetterFedFoods LLC has leveraged approximately $30 million to establish a supply chain of sustainable products.

The IBM Sustainability Accelerator is a pro-bono social impact program advancing nonprofit and government initiatives that support vulnerable populations while addressing environmental challenges, including climate change, extreme weather, and pollution. IBM will provide the first cohort of participating organizations with technology and expertise to accelerate climate-smart agriculture solutions. Partners are welcome globally. Through 2025, Accelerator projects will receive an estimated market value of $30 million in IBM support including $10 million focused on sustainable agriculture.

The Agroecological TRANSITIONS’ Inclusive Digital Tools project (ATDT) aims to leverage $25 million to develop digital solutions for smallholder farmers to scale up agroecological practices. The program will expand access of low-cost digital technical advisories and performance assessment tools to 100K farmers in ten countries and five value chains in Asia, Africa and Latin America. This will enable farmer co-creation and rapid development of site-appropriate climate change resilience and mitigation measures based on agroecological principles.

A new $24 million initiative led by the OneCGIAR, Livestock, Climate and System Resilience (LCSR) is designed to meet the “double burden” challenge that climate change poses for livestock production. It addresses both adaptation and mitigation priorities for livestock production systems in Kenya, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Mali, Senegal, Guatemala, and Colombia, delivering strategic, well-targeted action research that provides answers to the tough choices and tradeoffs, as well as ‘investable’ solutions that influence policy and attract climate finance.

Coffee production is a source of carbon emissions through the significant use of fertilizer, energy, and land. With a combined investment of over $21 million, ofi is working with USAID and other partners in Peru, Mexico, and DR Congo to train farmers on climate-smart agricultural practices and step-up carbon capture activities. We can track the impact of these activities on our coffee footprint through the environmental metrics of our sustainability management system AtSource.

The Integrated Desert Farming Innovation Platform will support the Arabian Peninsula and MENA region in boosting employment and income. It also aims to ensure food, nutrition, and water security for their populations as they face the impacts of climate change through integrating and fast-tracking innovative and circular desert farming technologies and business models. In addition, the Sprint aims to leverage an increased level of investment from $7 million over five years to $20 million by the end of 2025.

The Pan-Africa Bean Research Alliance (PABRA) and its partners will empower seed system actors to deliver climate-resilient bean varieties more efficiently to smallholder farmers in Burundi, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda. Mobilizing $20 million toward a demand-led and research-guide ‘bean corridor’ approach, this sprint innovation will accelerate bundling and scaling genetic and institutional innovations to improve bean productivity for three million farmers, two million of them accessing remunerative markets and 60% being women.

Community Jameel is partnering with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to develop Jameel Observatory-CREWSnet, a new initiative to empower adaptation and mitigation for climate shocks within the agriculture sector. This will combine state-of-the-art climate and socioeconomic forecasting techniques with resilience technologies and unique private, public, and community partnerships. It will pilot in Bangladesh and Sudan, working with local partners. The total increase in aggregate self-financed investment is $18.5 million.

With an investment of $15.5 million, this Innovation Sprint integrates 18 initiatives to generate solutions for farmers, communities, and countries in Latin America and the Caribbean across fourteen countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, Venezuela. The solutions target equitable and sustainable food security alongside resiliency and inclusion when combatting climate change. In addition, several organizations joined FONTAGRO to co-finance science, technology, and innovations to tackle challenges by working directly with scientists, extensionists, and farmers and to create public goods that help the region cope with climate challenges. 

With a budget of $15 million over the next three years (end of 2025) and the support of donors and partners, KickStart will drive the uptake of 100,000 carbon-neutral irrigation pumps among smallholders, spread across 16 Sub-Sahara countries, allowing them to harvest year-round sustainably, respond to (and mitigate) climate change, and tackle household poverty.

There is a way to help farmers grow their incomes more sustainably using Climate-smart agriculture. Collaborating with USAID, the Rainforest Alliance, and industry partners, ofi is working with cocoa farmers in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire, under the Resilient Ecosystems and Sustainable Transformation of Rural Economies (RESTORE) project. Over five years, USAID, ofi, and partners are investing $14 million  in supporting 15,000 farmers to acquire skills and tools to better protect their livelihoods and landscapes.

The Sustainable Pesticide Management Framework (SPMF) is a proactive, long-term engagement that supports low- and middle- income countries in their responsible use of pesticides and provides access to climate-smart crop protection innovations to smallholder farmers. Expanded access to the newest innovations in crop protection allows farmers to increase their resilience to climate change and maintain or grow their productivity, often while preserving soil health and carbon sequestration. By combining best practices in regulatory and stewardship, the SPMF creates an enabling environment for innovation; builds an infrastructure that supports sustainable pesticide management through poison centers, incident reporting, container management programs, and anti-counterfeit activities; and helps farmers respond to climate crises through accelerated access to the latest crop protection chemistries. With an investment of $13 million over five years, the SPMF will launch in nine priority low- and middle-income countries, beginning in 2022 in Kenya and Morocco.

The ClimateAi team seeks to “climate-proof” 0.5 billion acres around the world by 2024 by deploying AI-driven adaptation tools that boost agricultural productivity despite climate change. ClimateAi’s innovative climate analytics (1 day to 40 years out) help farmers and agribusinesses adapt by enabling data-driven decisions to maximize yield, crop quality, resource efficiency, and financial stability/profits while reducing GHG emissions per ton. ClimateAi recently raised $12M from investors and $250k in grant funding from the National Science Foundation.

The Dairy Soil & Water Regeneration project is the largest soil health study on working U.S. dairies. Launched in 2021, the six-year project covers four major dairy regions, reaching 80% of U.S. milk production, and measures how differing growing practices impact soil health and reduce emissions under varying climates and conditions. Partners are investing at least $10 million, with up to $10 million in matching funds from the Foundation of Food & Agriculture Research (FFAR). Findings will help to accelerate climate-smart solutions.

The Integrated Data Systems Initiative will provide multidimensional decision support to mainstream finance for healthy, sustainable food systems. The resulting data systems will feed into a new financial mechanism, the Co-Investment Platform for Food Systems Transformation. The initiative will mobilize $10 million over five years to support the mobilization of at least $10 billion in catalytic finance and wider pools of investment through the Co-Investment Platform over that same period. 

Cellular agriculture, a technology that produces animal products using cell cultures, could contribute to building resilient food systems with lower climate impacts. However, the climate benefits of this technology must be deliberately woven into its development. Through this Sprint, Cellular Agriculture for the Public Good, New Harvest aims to invest $10 million internationally to advance open research, drive evidence-based policy, and break down silos to inspire collaboration toward establishing cellular agriculture as a climate-smart food systems tool.

The Foundation of Food & Agriculture Research (FFAR) launched the Efficient Fertilizer Consortium, as part of the Global Fertilizer Challenge, to advance efficient, environmentally beneficial and cost-effective fertilizers, and management practices. The Efficient Fertilizer Consortium amplifies investments that increase nutrient-use efficiency, generate new and improved fertilizers, reduce fertilizer use and support sustainable productivity. FFAR will raise funds to match federal contributions of $4.45 million, allowing the Efficient Fertilizer Consortium to award at least $8.9 million in research funding.

The International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) and Bayer Crop Science will engage with smallholder farmers in Asia and Africa in research on sustainable adoption of direct seeded rice. The project’s goal is to improve farmer livelihoods integrating gender equity while reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the rice growing systems. Through 2025, USAID will invest $8.5 million at IRRI in partnership with Bayer Crop Science contributing an additional up to $4 million of in-kind support.

• Studying the Economics of Regenerative Soil Health Management Systems in Cotton Production
• Soil Health Farmer Networks
• Looking at Soil in a New Way 
• The Soil Health Institute Internship Program

The Transforming Investments in African Rainfed Agriculture (TIARA) initiative is challenging the status-quo on rainfed agriculture with an evidence-based approach to unlock the knowledge, skills and behaviours that are necessary for investments in climate smart enhanced rainfed agriculture to happen at scale in Africa. Led by  SIWI and CIFOR ICRAF, the TIARA project aims to mobilize $6.9 million through 2025 and build the case for sustainable funding mechanisms such as Payments for Ecological Services.

Climate change is a growing threat to food security, reducing crop yields and increasing vulnerability to pathogens and pests. Legumes are a critical source of nutrition for people, animals, and soils. 2Blades will exploit proprietary genomics tools and germplasm resources developed through an initial $35 million investment, with new investment of $6.6 million to economically scale gene discovery, and accelerate deployment in legumes for Africa. 2Blades seeks partners for development and funding totaling $12.7 million to further scale efforts.

NPA is led by Land O’Lakes Venture37 with Forage Genetics International, Corteva Agriscience, and the International Livestock Research Institute. The pilot launched in Kenya in 2020, providing a scalable, market-wide solution to key gaps in the animal nutrition market to improve dairy production, boost climate resilience among farmers, increase access to animal-sourced foods, and reduce emissions by promoting climate-smart agriculture and optimized animal nutrition practices. NPA has crowded in over $6.6 million in in-kind and financial investments.

Arable plans to invest $5 million to optimize nitrogen use in corn and potato crops through high-resolution spectral sensing, weather analysis, and remote sensing to reduce synthetic nitrogen use, increase productivity, and promote sustainable farming practices. The system includes five main components: in-field sensing, agronomic modeling, economic and risk components, user experience, and boots-on-the-ground people to drive adoption and understanding. The goal is to improve agricultural productivity and remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.

Paddy rice emissions due to flood duration vary significantly across regions and the inability to monitor emissions cost-effectively at scale and in real-time limits mitigation practices.  This Sprint will integrate field-scale data, biogeochemical modeling, and satellite observations to develop the ability to measure CH4 emissions from rice fields directly from space.  The Sprint leverages existing investment totalling $4 million and seeks additional funding for analysis, ground-truth data collection, scenario-building exerciseslivestockgre, and dissemination.

The Pathways to Dairy Net Zero (P2DNZ) is a program across the global dairy sector to reduce GHG emissions. P2DNZ has identified 10 emerging dairy countries as “Early Adopters” for the program that together represent >30% of global dairy GHG emissions. The initiative will help transform the dairy sector in these countries to achieve major reductions in GHG emission. PDNZ has already secured $3 million commitments and will attract additional funding from the Green Climate Fund and other donor groups to make the transition possible. 

With a $3 million initial investment, colleagues at the University of California Davis and Berkeley are leveraging their team’s interdisciplinary expertise to achieve a systems-level understanding of greenhouse gas fluxes in rice plants at the plant-microbe interface. They will carry out large scale phenotyping and genotyping approaches to develop new tools to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions.

The Brazilian Innovation Agency of the Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovation (FINEP) has dedicated $2 million to R&D for Alternative Protein innovation for the period 2023-25. Additionally, the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (EMBRAPA), an innovation-oriented public company focusing on generating knowledge and technology for Brazilian agriculture and cattle-raising, is hosting three research projects totalling $240,000 to develop novel structuring technologies to produce whole-cut chicken meat analog products using native plant ingredients.

FAIRR Initiative and the Good Food Institute (GFI), with several partners including Breakthrough Institute, have developed a standardized environmental, social and governance (ESG) framework for the alternative protein industry. Alternative proteins generate lower emissions and use less land and water than conventionally produced animal proteins. Robust ESG measurement tools will enable companies to demonstrate to investors and the market the climate benefits of alternative proteins, and allow for comparability between meat-based and alternative protein products and portfolios. Total expected investment of $1.27 million over 5 years.